Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray wonders why a “crown jewel” in the British government’s signals intercept network, the facility on Mount Troodos in Cyprus, did not intercept the alleged “smoking gun” telephone conversation beween the two Syrian government officials about the August 21st gas attack. This alleged conversation is key to the US case that the Syrian government is responsible and Obama’s decision to attack is based on it.
It was precisely the type of conversation that the facility was intended to intercept, as it is tasked to monitor “all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.”
It is this UK facility, writes Murray, that makes up the core of the US/UK intelligence cooperation in the region; therefore, he writes, it is strange that John Kerry somehow had access to the intercepts while the British Joint Intelligence Committee did not. The reason the UK did not intercept the conversation, he concludes, is that the intercepts were falsified by Israeli intelligence.
Writes Murray:
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways – not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children – has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided “intelligence” to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel’s bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry’s “evidence” is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.
